ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2024
Peer Support for Chronic Pain in Online Health Communities: Quantitative Study on the Dynamics of Social Interactions in a Chronic Pain Forum.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pain-centered symptom-language co-occurrence networks differ between interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome and fibromyalgia in Reddit patient discourse.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Feasibility of social media health education plus exercise in older adults with possible sarcopenia.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Article
- A scoping review of applications of natural language processing for chronic pain research.Discover artificial intelligence · 2026Review
- Health Care Content and Engagement in Chronic Illness Instagram Posts: Content Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPeer support for chronic pain is increasingly taking place on social media via social networking communities. Several theories on the development and maintenance of chronic pain highlight how rumination, catastrophizing, and negative social interactions can contribute to poor health outcomes. However, little is known regarding the role web-based health discussions play in the development of negative versus positive health attitudes relevant to chronic pain.
objectiveThis study aims to investigate how participation in online peer-to-peer support communities influenced pain expressions by examining how the sentiment of user language evolved in response to peer interactions.
methodsWe collected the comment histories of 199 randomly sampled Reddit (Reddit, Inc) users who were active in a popular peer-to-peer chronic pain support community over 10 years. A total of 2 separate natural language processing methods were compared to calculate the sentiment of user comments on the forum (N=73,876). We then modeled the trajectories of users' language sentiment using mixed-effects growth curve modeling and measured the degree to which users affectively synchronized with their peers using bivariate wavelet analysis.
resultsIn comparison to a shuffled baseline, we found evidence that users entrained their language sentiment to match the language of community members they interacted with (t
conclusionsOur results are consistent with the social communication model of pain, which describes how social interactions can influence the expression of pain symptoms. The difference in long-term versus short-term affective synchrony observed between community members suggests a process of emotional coregulation and social learning. Participating in health discussions on Reddit appears to be associated with both negative and positive changes in sentiment depending on how individual users interacted with their peers. Thus, in addition to characterizing the sentiment dynamics existing within online chronic pain communities, our work provides insight into the potential benefits and drawbacks of relying on support communities organized on social media platforms.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.